


you hollowed us of holiness and now we're rotting

by Catherines_Collections



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Codependency, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Polyamory, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Unhealthy Relationships, and it’s not something they take pride in, exorcists are death walking, they love eachother so much and would die for eachother in a second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-27 16:04:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12585540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: Sometimes, Allen swears, he can feel something tied around his wrist.





	you hollowed us of holiness and now we're rotting

**Author's Note:**

> RARE PAIR WEEK. I DID IT. AND WITH 3K NO LESS. I am amazed at myself, I hope you will be too.
> 
> Yeah so, you can't convince me that any of them like any aspect of the church (fictionally, and in the manga, not reality) and Lenalee's line of, "oh god that I hate so much, please help me,"
> 
> I own nothing, besides the title, enjoy!

It’s unspoken. Hidden in the corners of Kanda’s eyes, the tilt of Lavi’s grin, and the curl of Lenalee’s smile.

 _One day_ , it promises - one day it’ll be over; one day they won’t have to pay those above them back for something they never even wanted. One day their lives will mean something other than a symbol of an organization that never truly cared.

One day the scars of Allen’s back won’t burn repeatedly due to aggravation. One-day Lenalee’s ankles won’t ache from so much use that it hurts to walk. One-day Lavi won’t have to worry that what he can’t see due to his eyepatch will kill him. One day the climbing pressure from the marks marring Kanda’s arms will stop.

 _One day_ , Allen whispers and watches as Lenalee smiles, Kanda grunts, and Lavi laughs.

.

Lavi grins like he’s seen the world fall and has still yet to fall with it.

Lenalee laughs like the bruises around her ankles don’t rule her and the fact that her brother could be at risk doesn’t sit like a collar around her neck.

Kanda moves like he’s not afraid to die, and maybe he isn’t: maybe he never has to be.

Allen talks like a charmer, gambles like a maniac, and fights like everyone he faces will be his last because he never got over his first.

Allen looks at them all from the outside in, and wonders if that’s what the townspeople they are sent to help see. He wonders if they see the mighty impenetrable exorcist the church has sent them instead of the broken enslaved children put in their place: frightened and bruised, rewarded and branded with a title some never wanted, and some never knew better than not to ask for.

Allen watches them. Watches the bishops, the finders, other exorcists and bookman who each act like the chain around their necks, scars across their shoulders, and needless deaths of friends deemed not important enough for a rescue mission don’t lead back to the church.

Allen watches, smiles and talks and charms with every word just like he learned to, and waits.

.

He remembers the first time he let Cross see. How he charmed the local inn keeper into giving them a room they couldn’t afford due to Cross having already gambled all their money away.

Allen had batted his eyelashes, allowed a few tears to spring free as he mustered up a wobbly smile, and like everyone before her, the innkeeper had caved.

Allen thanked her profusely, and Cross just, watched: observed and learned and catalogued, because Cross wasn’t dumb, and he never truly forgot no matter how much he tried to make it look like he had.

It wasn’t until the Innkeeper left that Cross finally spoke.

He shook his head, a hoarse laugh ripping free from his throat as he rubbed the back if his neck.

“He must’ve really messed you up, kid,” Cross said, an observation delivered with no malice intent but with a message delivered clearly beneath it.

For a second they just stared at each other seeing who would be the first to cave. In the end, Cross feel back with a lighter laugh and collapsed on the bed. A clear indication for Allen to take the floor.

So Allen took the cue, turning his eyes away and towards the floor. It looked hard and cold, but he didn’t care because he was there to learn. To learn to kill the thing that killed Mana, that tried to kill him.

(“You’re a pretty vengeful brat, you know,” Cross said to him when he figured it out, because Cross had a way of reading him that Allen had never encountered before, and he gave Cross a tooth filled smile.)

By the time the innkeeper thought to check on them the next morning, they were already three towns over and five times richer due to some loose minded gamblers and Allen’s quick fingers.

.

Allen thinks: red.

Red like Lavi’s hair, like the blood dripping from Lenalee’s ankles, like the swollen markings wrapped so tightly around Kanda’s arm that they blend with the scars.

(Red like Cross’ hair; like the blood that ran down his arm after fighting his first Akuma. Red like the blood staining Tyki’s hand when he’d squeezed Allen’s heart into nearly nothing and laughed. Red like the teeth in Road’s smile when she’d blinded him the first time.

Red like what he used to see on Mana’s hand when he’d pull it back from his mouth after coughing, and smile like it wasn’t even there.

Red everywhere because it’s in _everything:_ it is everything _._ )

He thinks of the Earl, of the Noah’s; thinks of Mana and Neah and two brothers who had nothing and lost everything. He thinks of grey skin that never blemishes, and how everything has always seemed too red through the scope of his right eye.

Allen thinks of Lenalee who never had a choice, Lavi who’s lived too many lives for being so young, and Kanda who didn’t ask to be brought back.

He thinks of the church and the bishops and finders and he thinks: injustice. Thinks: unfair. He thinks about how he’s destined to be a Noah, to have his body overtaken after he’s struggled to make it this far. Thinks about how all it will want is to destroy everything he’s ever built.

(He thinks about how angry and tearful Lenalee would be, how mournful and furious Lavi would become, how quiet and enraged Kanda would get.

He thinks how he would kill himself before he ever hurt any of them.)

He thinks he agrees with Lavi when he says the language of world has been written in blood for far too long.

He thinks it’s time for change.

.

“We should run,” Allen whispers. The mission is slow and the village is small and his mouth feels hot and dry. Lenalee laughs and he feels chilled by the hoarse broken edge to it.

“Yeah,” she snickers, but nothing about it is humorous, “good luck with that.”

“Where would we go?” Lavi interrupts and Allen jumps, tilting his head over to where Lavi is lying to the right of him and catches a glimpse of Lavi’s grinning face. He huffs and ignores the way his heart skips a beat when Lavi laughs.

“There is nowhere to go,” Lenalee speaks up, and now it’s Lavi’s turn to jump and Lenalee’s smirk fades into a frown as her eyes glaze over, “nowhere they wouldn’t eventually find us anyway.”

Lavi scoffs and Lenalee’s eyes regain their fire as she sits up.

“What, you think this is a joke? You’re a Bookman, you know how they work: how this works. Do you think we could actually out run them? Outsmart them? It’s not like we’re inconspicuous, we don’t have the advantage that finders have of blending.”

Lavi opens his mouth but Allen grabs his shoulder and squeezes in warning. Lavi slowly closes his mouth and they both listen as Lenalee continues.

“Do you think townspeople won’t notice the girl with the strange shoes that she never takes off? Or what about the boy whose arms are covered in strange markings!”

She snarls, and Allen digs his fingernails into Lavi’s shoulder as he sees Lavi bite his lip, drawing a bit of blood.

“Because, oh yeah, common superstitious townsfolk definitely won’t report to the church any sightings of a white haired young man with a monster arm, or a bright red head carrying a hammer that grows and always wears an eye patch!”

Lenalee seethes and then her shoulders fall like her body has caved in, like she’s been defeated and beaten down too far inside of herself, and she laughs: cold and broken and sad. And the whole room seems to ache from the sound.

“They’ll find us,” she whispers, caving further into herself, “because they always do.”

She looks back down at her hands and curls up to place her head on her knees.

“Trust me. I know. I’ve tried.”

For a moment, the room is completely silent. No one moves. Just lets the tension in the room deflate until they can each organize their thoughts.

(Until Allen can stop digging his nails into Lavi’s shoulder, and Lavi can stop drawing blood from his lip, and Kanda’s back relaxes back how it was before Lenalee began to yell. Until Lenalee’s breathing slows and it feels like there’s air again.)

“Enough,” Kanda’s snaps, and the other three jump, “some of us are trying to sleep.”

Allen blinks, opens his mouth to say _something_ but Lavi beats him to it.

Lavi whistles, “Wow, Yuu. You sure know how to kill a mood, huh?”

Lavi quietly laughs when he speaks, but there’s something tired, longing Allen thinks, tied into the words.

Kanda grunts, but he shuffles closer to where Lenalee is lying on the bed, and Allen and Lavi subtly shift as well until they’re all huddled together: breaths mingling and arms lying over each other.

It takes Allen too long to close his eyes, but when he finally does he’s greeted by a darkness he hasn’t felt since he noticed the Noah’s invaded his mind.

.

Their return from the mission feels longer than their initial arrival, and suddenly Allen feels like the sea has swallowed him.

“I-,” he starts, and Lavi turns, Kanda glances over, Lenalee stares, and Allen doesn’t even remember falling to the ground he just suddenly realizes he has.

He’s grasping his sides, fingernails tearing at the material of his shirt trying to reach the skin underneath, and laughing as hard as he can. He shuts his eyes, and laughs till it hurts. Because everything hurts, because everything is wrong and horrible and incredibly unfair and none of them asked for any of this.

Maybe he’s finally snapped: become the Noah everyone told him he’d end up being. Have his body taken over and self-erased and have Neah take over everything he tried to build.

“Allen,” a voice says, and maybe it’s Lavi, or maybe it’s Lenalee or Kanda or maybe he’s hallucinating again and when he opens his eyes there will be a Noah standing in front of him: smiling and taking and hurting, like always.

“Allen,” the voice repeats, stronger, forceful and commanding, and when his eyes snap open he’s met with Lavi kneeling in front of him with Kanda and Lenalee close behind.

The last few giggles slip out hidden amongst hitched breaths and trying to pull his twisted mind together and away from the voice edging him further into the red.

“There you go,” Lavi murmurs. Lenalee passes him some water, Kanda stands guard like Allen just might be something worth his protection, and Allen doesn’t know how to feel or think about any of this. So he doesn’t.

Later, after Kanda has helped him up and Lenalee and Lavi take turns brushing against him checking and smiling and Allen wonders if they can hear how loud his heart beats in his chest, he recalls that Lavi never told him he was alright, or that he was fine and that they would get through this like they have everything else.

He notices that Lavi didn’t lie, and something warms in him.

The next time one of them brushes against him, he makes sure to give them a smile. Because, for once, he thinks it might mean something.

.

“Are you ready?” Allen asks Lenalee one night. The other two are asleep, all of them curled around each other, carving out their own home in each other.

He doesn’t have to specify, because she has been an exorcist longer than him. She knows first hand how it all goes- eventually, inevitably.

“I thought I was,” she whispers, curling a hand around Lavi’s shoulder and leaning further into Kanda as she looks him in the eye. The moon shines through the window of their inn, and Allen wonders how he never noticed just how pale she is. How someone so strong could hide within such a small body.

“And now?” he asks, running a hand through Kanda’s hair below him, and smiling at the quiet sigh.

She doesn’t look at him when she answers, instead turns her head downwards and reaches out for his hand. He meets her half-way. She squeezes it.

“Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do if I’m not the first one to go.”

Allen thinks of failed rescue missions and rogue exorcists, Noah’s and never ending Akuma’s.

He thinks of grief and what it can drive people to: what it drove him to, and if he ever learned any better, or if he just taught himself to be stronger.

They don’t talk any more that night, and allow the sleeping breathes of the other two to lull them to sleep.

.

Sometimes, Allen swears, he can feel something tied around his wrist.

 _Chains_ , Cross used to tell him, describing the same weight and heavy metal taste on his tongue that Allen has, _you have chains on your wrist, idiot apprentice. If I didn't know better, I'd say fate is attempting to make you her personal slave._

Cross laughed, slapped a hand onto his shoulder too hard, told him, _maybe Fate will make a puppet of you yet._

And at the time - too blinded by his mission for justice, the taste of revenge as sharp on his tongue as the hint of metal burrowed around his gums - he just wondered who Cross was laughing at: Allen or himself.

Sometimes he pulls on the chains of his wrist - of his mind, of his body - just to test: just to see.

Sometimes there’s nothing. Sometimes there’s devastation so heavy that Lenalee has to carry an unconscious Kanda to the nearest hospital while Allen tries to find where Lavi was thrown during the fight.

After a while, after the bruises pile up and the smiles get thinner and he finally realizes that the promises of the church are never what he really wanted, he stops pulling.

.

Not for the first time, they are too late to a mission. An Akuma’s moves are unpredictable, and the science they have of them scarce, and most of the time spent on the way to a mission is spent praying that there will still be one.

Allen wonders if anyone remembered to pray on the train. He wonders if it would have made a difference.

Lavi begins to knock wood, that probably once belonged to a part of a house, away and Kanda follows him in a search for survivors.

They know there won’t be any. Akuma don’t leave humans alone, and the ones they don’t kill they drive mad.

They aren’t hopeful.

Lavi wades through the rubble, Kanda walks on, and all the while Lenalee stares at the remains and out into the fiery sun burning ahead of them. It’s fitting, the blood orange and red beams that fall over the town. Like a finale salute to fallen comrades.

But it’s not. It’s just nature, and this is just another dead demolished village that they couldn’t save.

“I’m going to burn it to the ground one day,” Lenalee says, ripping Allen from his thoughts and pulling him straight into her’s, “all of it, every last cell.”

She turns her piercing gaze to him, and he wonders how he ever thought she was the less twisted of them two.

He knows what she means. What she’s always thought, and what they all have to do. He knows how much she hates the church, of some of the horrible things they did, some of the horrible things they did to her that she shared - Kanda grasping her hand halfway through and breathing harshly through his nose - they know of the evils that rule them, and they know they must go.

So he nods, says, “And we’ll be there to help,” and listens as her delighted giggles blend with the tossing of wood and calls for strangers, echoing across an orange drenched landscape of devastation.

.

When they do leave, it’s sudden and the night is as quiet as it is dark. There is no moon soon, Lavi tells him a week before, and Allen passes it off with a grunt because people are watching and they’ve all been playing the game too long to come this far and lose.

Lenalee had convinced Komui and Reever and the rest of the scientist to take a vacation this weekend, months ago. Even went as far as planning it herself.

(Komui kisses her on the forehead and pulls her as close as he can when they say goodbye.

Lenalee had rolled her eyes, because she was always too good at finding ways to hide her tears, and said, “It’s just for the weekend,” smiling when they finally pulled back.

“Yeah,” Komui nodded, pushing a wobbly smile onto his one lips, waving away Reever who looked on with a raised eyebrow, “for the weekend.”

Lenalee cried in their bed that night. Lavi wrapped around her, Kanda holding her hand, and Allen petting her hair, whispering, “breathe,” like it was something any of them could afford to do yet.)

They clear the rest of their loved ones out as well. Arrange trips months in advance, and insure that no one they care about will be in that building once they abandon it.

Kanda packs what he wants from his room, and Lavi stocks his scrolls and pens in a sack. Lenalee stares at her room, and takes nothing but the picture of Komui and her before the church.

Allen takes what he arrived with, and leaves with three more attachments than he originally planned.

“Are you ready?” Lenalee asks, when they are all out of the church and hidden on the outskirts. They each nod, and Lenalee smiles.

When the church goes up in flames, none of them look back as it falls.

.

“How’s freedom taste, princess?” Lavi asks, lips swollen from stolen kisses and eyes glowing from their campfire.

Lenalee licks her lips and they all stare even after said lips form a smirk, “A little like gangly a red-head, but what can you do?”

Lavi squawks and starts on a whole new rant, until Kanda finally pulls him into him and kisses him silent.

Allen smiles, Lenalee leans over for a kiss.

She tastes like ash and blood and _free_ and when she pulls back his eyes are lidded.

“One day,” Lavi sings, hanging off Kanda.

“One day,” Lenalee repeats. She elbows Kanda, who hisses but relaxes.

“One day,” he says.

They all look at Allen and he - thinks: red and ash and nothing but freedom ahead - meets their smiles half-way and nods, “One day.”

Because the world is made up of red, but at least now they can pick their shade.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Comments and Kudos much appreciated and I'm rhymesofblue on tumblr.


End file.
